The Iron Heel eBook

from Glen Ellen, after the second bridge is passed,
to the right will be noticed a barranca that
runs like a scar across the rolling land toward
a group of wooded knolls. The barranca is
the site of the ancient right of way that in the
time of private property in land ran across the holding
of one Chauvet, a French pioneer of California
who came from his native country in the fabled
days of gold. The wooded knolls are the
same knolls referred to by Avis Everhard.

The Great Earthquake of 2368 A.D. broke
off the side of one of these knolls and toppled
it into the hole where the Everhards made their
refuge. Since the finding of the Manuscript
excavations have been made, and the house, the two
cave rooms, and all the accumulated rubbish of long
occupancy have been brought to light. Many
valuable relics have been found, among which,
curious to relate, is the smoke-consuming device
of Biedenbach’s mentioned in the narrative.
Students interested in such matters should read the
brochure of Arnold Bentham soon to be published.

A mile northwest from the wooded knolls
brings one to the site of Wake Robin Lodge at
the junction of Wild-Water and Sonoma Creeks.
It may be noticed, in passing, that Wild- Water
was originally called Graham Creek and was so named
on the early local maps. But the later
name sticks. It was at Wake Robin Lodge
that Avis Everhard later lived for short periods,
when, disguised as an agent-provocateur of the Iron
Heel, she was enabled to play with impunity her
part among men and events. The official
permission to occupy Wake Robin Lodge is still
on the records, signed by no less a man than
Wickson, the minor oligarch of the Manuscript.

CHAPTER XIX

TRANSFORMATION

“You must make yourself over again,” Ernest
wrote to me. “You must cease to be.
You must become another woman—­and not merely
in the clothes you wear, but inside your skin under
the clothes. You must make yourself over again
so that even I would not know you—­your voice,
your gestures, your mannerisms, your carriage, your
walk, everything.”

This command I obeyed. Every day I practised
for hours in burying forever the old Avis Everhard
beneath the skin of another woman whom I may call
my other self. It was only by long practice that
such results could be obtained. In the mere detail
of voice intonation I practised almost perpetually
till the voice of my new self became fixed, automatic.
It was this automatic assumption of a role that was
considered imperative. One must become so adept
as to deceive oneself. It was like learning a
new language, say the French. At first speech
in French is self-conscious, a matter of the will.
The student thinks in English and then transmutes
into French, or reads in French but transmutes into
English before he can understand. Then later,
becoming firmly grounded, automatic, the student reads,
writes, and thinks in French, without any recourse
to English at all.